PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 11841031

Preconception gender selection.

J A Robertson
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Safe and effective methods of preconception gender selection through flow cytometric separation of X- and Y-bearing sperm could greatly increase the use of gender selection by couples contemplating reproduction. Such a development raises ethical, legal, and social issues about the impact of such practices on offspring, on sex ratio imbalances, and on sexism and the status of women. This paper analyzes the competing interests in preconception gender selection, and concludes that its use to increase gender variety in a family, and possible for selecting the gender of firstborn, might in many instances be ethically acceptable.

Explore related subjects

Ethical AnalysisEthicsFemaleFreedomHumansMaleMotivationPatient Acceptance of Health CarePrejudicePublic PolicyRiskRisk AssessmentSex PreselectionSocial ChangeSocial Control, FormalSocial Control, InformalAnalytical ApproachGenetics and ReproductionJournal ArticleReview

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

J A Robertson. 2001. Preconception gender selection.. https://doi.org/10.1162/152651601300048143

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2006

Rebutting the suggestion that Anthony Giddens's Structuration Theory offers a useful framework for sociological nursing research: a critique based upon Margaret Archer's Realist Social Theory.

A recent paper in this journal by Hardcastle et al. in 2005 argued that Anthony Giddens's Structuration Theory (ST) might usefully inform sociological nursing research. In response, a critique of ST based upon the Realist Social Theory of Margaret Archer is presented. Archer maintains that ST is fatally flawed and, in consequence, it has little to offer nursing research. Following an analysis of the concepts epiphenomenalism and elisionism, it is suggested that emergentist Realist Social Theory captures or describes a more coherent explanatory vision of social reality than other perspectives and nurse researchers are advised to consider its potential.

Ethical Analysis↗
PubMed2006

A pluralist view of nursing ethics.

This paper makes the case for a pluralist, contextualist view of nursing ethics. In defending this view, I briefly outline two current perspectives of nursing ethics - the Traditional View and the Theory View. I argue that the Traditional View, which casts nursing ethics as a subcategory of healthcare ethics, is problematic because it (1) fails to sufficiently acknowledge the unique nature of nursing practice; and (2) applies standard ethical frameworks such as principlism to moral problems which tend to alienate or undermine nursing ethical concerns. Alternatively, the Theory View, which aims to build an independent and comprehensive theory of nursing ethics, is also found wanting because it (1) fails to sufficiently acknowledge the heterogeneous nature of nursing practices; (2) overemphasizes the differences and undervalues the similarities between nurses and other health professionals; and (3) assumes that one ethical framework can be meaningfully applied across diverse moral problems and contexts. My alternative, is to argue that nursing ethics inquiry should take a pluralist and critical stance towards available ethical frameworks and the negotiation of the ethical realm. On this view, the search for moral consensus or a unique ethical framework for nursing is replaced by the task of working strategically with multiple frameworks in order to expand the moral agency of nurses and empower them to positively engage with moral uncertainty as an inevitable feature of living a moral life. I conclude by indicating some of the implications that this has for the teaching of nursing ethics.

Ethical Analysis↗
PubMed2006

What should other healthcare professions learn from nursing ethics.

This paper analyses the question what other healthcare professions should learn from nursing ethics, e.g. what should medical ethics learn from nursing ethics. I first analyse and reject all strong versions of the claim that nursing ethics is unique, because nursing is a unique practice. I then move to the question of whether the link between nursing ethics and nursing theory can be a model for other areas of healthcare ethics. I provide an analysis of the possibility of creating a theory of medicine and find that there cannot be a theory of medicine, and I argue briefly that this finding is also applicable to nursing. If there cannot be a theory of nursing, this entails that nursing ethics cannot be justifiably based on such a theory. In the final section, I then analyse the success of nursing ethics in resisting certain of the vices of Anglo-American analytic ethics, in particular the reductionism and individualism that characterizes much of healthcare ethics. I conclude that other healthcare ethics could usefully learn from this aspect of nursing ethics.

Ethical Analysis↗